It’s way early yet. There’s a long, hot summer ahead and our favorite hockey team has a lot of holes to fill. And only $15 million in change with which to do it.
So far, I like what I’m seeing from Ron Hextall.
Aside from embattled Minnesota GM Bill Guerin, I’d be hard pressed to think of a general manager who’s facing a more daunting set of challenges. Indeed, Hextall’s tasked with rebuilding a fading former champion. On the fly without sacrificing the future. And signing franchise icons Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin to new deals without breaking the bank while fleshing out a competitive team.
Oh, and restocking the team’s barren prospect pool without the benefit of prime draft picks. All the while convincing a new ownership group he’s the right man for the job.
If it were me, I’d be having kittens right about now.
Give Hextall credit. He seems to be rising to the admittedly stiff test. He smartly extended pending UFAs Letang and Bryan Rust by trading off dollars for term, in the process preserving as much cap space as possible.
Perhaps it’s a bit of a shell game and there’ll be a price to pay down the road. But I credit Hextall for being creative, a trait you wouldn’t think he possesses given his tight-lipped, straightforward nature.
Indeed, when I think of GMRH words like methodical, deliberate, measured and precise come to mind. Jim Rutherford he ain’t. Maybe that’s a good thing. After all, it was JR who steered the good ship Penguin into troubled salary cap waters with his shotgun blast approach to team building…then bailed before he had to deal with the consequences.
I like the work Hextall and his staff did at the draft. Top pick Owen Pickering is a bit of a project, but his selection drew unsolicited praise from a number of other teams. For several years I’ve lamented the Pens’ lack of size and gristle. In Pickering, Nolan Collins and Luke Devlin, Hextall drafted bigger kids who can move, breaking away from the speedy Smurf mold favored by coach Mike Sullivan.
When Hextall did go small? He picked an athletic Russian goalie and a highly skilled and competitive player with NHL bloodlines in Zam Plante.
For the record, when you have some bigger players in the mix, it’s perfectly acceptable to season the lineup with the likes of Evan Rodrigues, Valtteri Puustinen (and Plante). As recent Cup winners Colorado and Tampa Bay have so clearly demonstrated, variety is not only the spice of life but hockey teams, too.
But I digress.
With free agency looming in a few days, we’re entering a critical phase of the summer. Decisions need to be made, post-haste, on Rickard Rakell, Rodrigues, Danton Heinen and Kasperi Kapanen, to say nothing of Geno. Decisions that will have a profound impact on the makeup and direction of team in the coming season.
That’s a lot of horseflesh to have in play simultaneously. Starting with the Malkin negotiations, a critical piece of the Pens’ puzzle, there’s still plenty that can go awry. Given the challenges he’s facing, Hextall has virtually no margin for error. Indeed, he almost needs to be letter perfect in his moves.
Nor is he performing his duties in a vacuum. There are 31 other GMs out there, each with needs. Each eager to strike the best deals possible for their respective clubs. Roughly akin to snorkeling in a shark tank between feeding times.
Talk about being precariously perched on a razor’s edge. I’m sure Hextall’s experienced some sleepless nights.
Thus far he’s been calm and steady through the storm. And he’s earning my trust.
Rick
Like you I’m not down on Hextall and he’s definitely has tough sledding ahead of him to shore up the teams
roster. I’m not upset with him taking Pickering with our first pick but what confuses me is with the state of
our team why he wouldn’t look for a player that may be able to step in and play immediately? Is it because
After signing Letang and possibly Malkin they really don’t need a player to crack the lineup in the near future?
It seems similar to an NBA Team drafting a player without a roster spot to fill and then stashing him overseas
for a couple of years”just saying” The next few weeks should be interesting to see how Hextall navigates the
salary cap and addresses multiple team needs. I see where he’s decided to qualify Kapanen but not Heinen.
GO PENS
Sorry Rick, I have to disagree. There have been some fairly good things but some really poor things done so far this off season.
I am no Letang fan as any long time reader can attest but with no plan B, squeezing Letang into a $6 million contract was not a bad move. I like the numbers but not the years
However, the Owen Pickering pick was one of the poor things. I couldn’t care less about what other teams SAY the think of Pickering. What they did speaks volumes to the opposite. Pickering was rated a 2nd or 3rd round pick until a tourny team coach said some good things about him and next thing you know it went viral. Twenty teams passed on Pickering before Hextall picked and judging by the players taken after him, 11 other GMs also would have passed had the Pens drafted a different player. You don’t squander 1st round picks on 2nd or 3rd round players.
If as Pryor said of a later pick the Penguins were looking for the best available player at any given moment in the draft then they would have drafted Lamoureux, Snuggerd, Gaucher, or Yorov, not another cream-puff defenseman that has no clue how to defend his own zone and likes to hang out in front of the opposing Goalie rather than man the point.
I am not saying that Pickering will never develop, anything is possible. It takes D – Men until they are 27 ish. Maybe by 2032 he will be NHL ready for 2nd pairing duty but he is not a No 1 and a complete waster of a 1st round pick.
Musharov and Plante are midgets and more to dislike about this summer. Musharov is 4″ smaller than most NHL goalies at only 6′-0″. Also, he is only 167 lbs, even if he makes the NHL, he will never be able to stand up to the pressure the Pens milquetoast defense allow to weigh down on our net. Furthermore, with the political clime, he may never make it to the NHL.
By the time GMRH pick anyone of size it was already the 6th round. How many 6th rounders make the NHL?
The more things change the more they stay the same here in the ‘burgh.